Cities
Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood beckons tourists from around the world. Photo by J Fusco for Visit Philadelphia.
What do you do if you’re in charge of marketing a city destination and you lose most of your state funding?
If you’re Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of Visit Philadelphia — the official destination marketing organization for the city and five regional counties — you get creative.
Levitz, who has headed up Visit Philadelphia (known as the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation until November 2013) since the mid-1990s, told the travel site Skift.com that her biggest challenge was funding, with Pennsylvania state cutbacks resulting in a one-third cutback in her budgets for the past three years. State funding for Visit Philadelphia has dropped from $4 or $5 million a year to zero, though this year they’re getting a special $850,000 grant from the state to promote countryside towns in the area.… Continue reading
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson”s home, is just outside Charlottesville and one of its prime attractions. Photo by Clark Norton
Having recently spent a week in Charlottesville, Virginia, home to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the Jefferson-designed University of Virginia among other terrific places for baby boomer travelers to visit, I was intrigued to learn that the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau (CACVB) has been garnering all kinds of awards for its marketing efforts on social media.
Just a few days ago, the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI) announced that the CACVB’s social media campaign had won a prestigious Adrian Gold Award, which honors outstanding achievements in advertising, public relations and digital marketing in the travel industry.
The CACVB has also taken home awards this year for “Best Public Relations Initiative” and “Best Online Marketing Campaign” from the Virginia Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus, as well as a… Continue reading
The Little Havana Food Tour in Miami is one experience you can book at Peek.com. Photo from Miami Culinary Tours.
Let’s say you’re on your way to San Francisco and you’re looking to do things beyond the standard trip to Fisherman’s Wharf, a stroll through Golden Gate Park, or a cable car ride.
Maybe you’d like a sailing tour of San Francisco Bay, a walking tour through North Beach, an electric bike tour of San Francisco, or a food and farm tour of Marin County.
Or maybe you didn’t even know these latter possibilities existed.
This is where a relatively new website called Peek.com comes in. You can go to the site, click on San Francisco (there’s a colorful box with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on the home page), and an array of possible activities will come up, organized by categories: Food and Drink, Romantic, Under $50,… Continue reading
Spaceport America — will it revive the fortunes of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico? Photo from Spaceport America.
Baby boomers of a certain age may vaguely recall when a small town in southern New Mexico, then called Hot Springs due to the natural hot springs in the area, agreed to change its name in 1950 to Truth or Consequences.
Ralph Edwards, the host of a popular radio and soon-to-be TV quiz show (called, of course, Truth or Consequences) offered to broadcast the show from any town that would change its name to, you guessed it, Truth or Consequences, in honor of the show’s tenth anniversary. Edwards returned every year for decades on the anniversary, and Truth or Consequences turned the occasion into a celebration called the T or C Fiesta. (The town is now usually referred to simply as T or C by the locals).
T or C gained… Continue reading
Jerusalem ranks fourth on TripAdvisor’s list of global destinations “on the rise.” Photo by Clark Norton
Which destinations do travelers really want to go to right now — as opposed to ones that they might only be dreaming about for the future?
The always informative travel news site skift.com has a piece that tries to answer that question, based on “millions of searches and reviews” on the mega-review site TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has come out with lists of “places that have seen the greatest increase in positive traveler feedback and traveler interest” of late — in short, destinations that are “on the rise.”
The destinations are listed in “top ten” order globally as well as for the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the South Pacific. The lists reflect all age groups so there’s no way of knowing what percentage were baby boomers doing the searching.
Here, according… Continue reading
Monticello — Jefferson’s home, which appears on the U.S. nickel coin. Photo by Clark Norton
I spent last week in Charlottesville, Virginia, visiting family over Thanksgiving, and found it to be a very livable — and visit-able — city, which I highly recommend for baby boomer travelers.
Mostly I knew it as the home of the University of Virginia and Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, both of which were designed by our third president. Those two sites alone would warrant a visit, but anyone interested in history, outdoor activities and good food would find a welcome respite in Charlottesville.
Now here are ten things I didn’t know about Charlottesville:
Montpelier, home of President James Madison. Photo by Lia Norton
* Some of the most coveted and prestigious student residences at the University of Virginia have no bathrooms. These are historic ground-floor single rooms facing the Lawn, the long… Continue reading
The Polish town of Wieliczka has a subterranean salt mine that houses a cathedral complete with chandeliers made of salt. Photo from Flickr.
I spent yesterday in New York City at VEMEX (Visit Europe Media Exchange), where a throng of travel writers met with dozens of representatives of European travel destinations, tour agencies, railways, river cruises and rental cars.
Representatives were allotted 15 minutes to update each writer on what was new, compelling and noteworthy about their destinations or companies, with writers busily scribbling unreadable notes and — more helpfully — pocketing cleverly packaged thumb drives that they could later plug into their computers with all the salient information.
And there was information aplenty, providing a good indication of what types of visitors and customers they’re seeking and how they hope to attract them.
I can guarantee you that baby boomer travelers — who tend to favor… Continue reading
Lee’s Summit, Missouri, hopes to attract multi-generational visits featuring baby boomer grandparents. Photo from Lee’s Summit Visitors Council.
Lee’s Summit, Missouri — a city of about 90,000 people and part of the Kansas City greater metropolitan area — is targeting baby boomer travelers who are planning to take multi-generational trips in the near future, hoping to capture some of that growing market.
I’ve written a number of times about the growing baby boomer travel trend of multi-generational travel — going on trips with your kids and grandkids, often three generations at once — such as in this piece, which focuses on boomers traveling with their grandkids, and this piece, which identifies a multi-generational trend in taking river cruises.
Lee’s Summit’s tourism sector — the Visitors Council, Chamber of Commerce and some private travel-related businesses — did some research and found that one out of three “baby boomers… Continue reading
A stony-faced Queen’s Guard.
An Australian publication recently nominated candidates for the four worst tourists of the past few years. (To my knowledge, none are baby boomer travelers.)
Here are the four, with names omitted to protect the innocent:
1. Everyone who has been to London has no doubt seen the Queen’s Guards who march and stand stony-faced in front of Buckingham Palace, and I’m sure there have been a number of tourists over the years who have tried to make them laugh, smile, or even give the slightest reaction. And it never works — or almost never. In 2009, one young man from Colombia was so obnoxious in mimicking a guardsman’s gait as he marched solemnly along that the guardsman broke ranks and went over to give the tourist an angry shove from behind. And really, who could blame him?
2. Halfway around the world, three British tourists,… Continue reading
Mayor Bowers with his Spanish-speaking dog. Photo by Clark Norton
Most memorable travel moments revolve around people as well as sights and activities — often chance encounters on the road, sometimes fleeting, other times resulting in more long-lasting friendships.
Here are a few snapshots from my recent stay in and around Roanoke, Virginia, made possible by the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau, which sponsored me and a number of other travel writers and photographers so that we could get an overview of the area, dubbed “Virginia’s Blue Ridge.”
In Roanoke, some of my encounters were pre-planned, others serendipitous.
My fellow writers and I were privileged to meet the mayor of the city, David Bowers, who greeted us on an overlook atop Mill Mountain, below the city’s iconic 100-foot-high illuminated star. (Read more about the star here.)
The mayor brought his “Spanish-speaking dog,” who, while not actually… Continue reading
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